'Logical Punctuation' vs. Traditional Rules of Style

Being something of a grammar geek, I couldn't resist checking out a
column posted this week by Slate's Ben Yagoda entitled "The Rise of 'Logical
Punctuation". Hmmmm. Sounds like a bit of an oxymoron to me!

Yagoda notes that for at least two centuries, it's been standard
practice in the United States to place commas and periods inside
quotation marks, as a style rule employed by, for example Slate itself,
the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and most any
publication that adheres to Modern Language Association (MLA) or AP
style guidelines.

Strunk and White, whose Elements of Style is regarded by many
as the authoritative word on such matters, declares (PDF):
"Formal quotations, cited as documentary evidence, are introduced by a
colon and enclosed in quotation marks." An example given:

The provision of the Constitution is: "No tax or duty
shall be laid on articles exported from any state."

On the other hand, Yagoda observes that with increasing frequency in
"copy-editor-free zones" like the Web, emails, student papers, and
business memos, commas and periods find themselves outside of quotation
marks, looking in. Yagoda contends that a punctuation paradigm is
shifting, with copious examples of the "outside" quotation marks
technique referred to as the "British style" cropping up here, there,
and everywhere. He says the punctuation-outside trend also jibes with
his experience in the classroom, where, for the past several years, his
students have found it irresistible, and he's recently instituted a
one-point penalty on every assignment for infractions.

There are other examples of popular usage kicking back against
formal convention. GrammarTips.com's Tina Blue observes that when it
comes to commas and periods, in her estimation logic doesn't enter
into the equation, at least not in the United States where
Universal American Usage indeed does place commas and periods inside
quotation marks, regardless of what she would regard as logical.

Blue advocates that whenever we have to use a question mark or an
exclamation point with a sentence that ends in a quotation, we should
follow the dictates of logic in determining where the question mark or
exclamation point goes. If it is part of the quotation itself, put it
inside the quotation marks, and if it governs the sentence as a whole
but not the material being quoted, put it outside the quotation marks.
That sounds reasonable, at least from the standpoint of logic.

Wikipedia, whose Style Guide endorses "logical punctuation" (which
we try to adhere to at Low End Mac, since we serve a worldwide audience
- more on that in the publisher's note at the end of this article),
affirms: "Whenever we have to use a question mark or an exclamation
point with a sentence that ends in a quotation, we follow the dictates
of logic in determining where the question mark or exclamation point
goes. If it is part of the quotation itself, we put it inside the
quotation marks, and if it governs the sentence as a whole but not the
material being quoted, we put it outside the quotation marks, and with
its entry on
quotation mark punctuation observing that "while these two styles
are most commonly referred to as American and British (and some style
sheets provide no other name), some American writers and organizations
use the British style and vice versa. Both systems have the same rules
regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons and semicolons.
They differ on the treatment of periods and commas."

The article continues: "In the US, the standard style is called
American style, typesetters' rules, printers' rules, typographical
usage, or traditional punctuation, whereby commas and
periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks.] This
style of punctuation is common in the US and Canada, and is mandated by
the Chicago Manual of Style and other American style guides. The
other standard style - called British style or logical
punctuation - is to include within quotation marks only those
punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material, but otherwise
to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks. Fowler's A
Dictionary of Modern English Usage provides a good example of the
British-style rule: "All signs of punctuation used with words in
quotation marks must be placed according to the sense." (Several of
these points are footnoted in the article.)

Yagoda suggests that push-back against the standard American usage
is gaining popularity for two reasons. First as a consequence of
working with computers and writing computer code, both endeavors in
which one is often instructed to "input" a string of characters, and
sometimes (in the printed instructions) the characters that are in
computer code syntax are enclosed in quotation marks. However, he
suggests that the main reason is that the British way simply makes more
sense, noting that since at least the 1960s a common designation for
that popular style has been "logical punctuation" and arguing that the
American style is inconsistent, moreover, because when it comes to
other punctuation marks - semicolons, colons, exclamation points,
question marks, and dashes - in which US style manuals follow
British/logical protocol.

Consequently, he contends that it's hard or even impossible to
defend the American way on the merits, that's probably because it
emerged from aesthetic, not logical, considerations, citing expert
Rosemary Feal saying that it was instituted in the early days of the
Republic in order

"to improve the appearance of the text. A comma or
period that follows a closing quotation mark appears to hang off by
itself and creates a gap in the line (since the space over the mark
combines with the following word space)."

Yagoda somewhat ruefully concedes that despite the love it's getting
from the masses, logical punctuation isn't likely to break through to
rule-keepers any time soon, noting that when he asked Feal and Carol
Saller, who oversees the Chicago Manual of Style, if there was a
chance their organizations would switch to so-called "logical"
punctuation, they both replied, in essence: "How about never? Is never
good for you?"

Personally, my inclination is to go with Feal and Saller, not
because I don't find the logical argument somewhat compelling, and
since being Canadian I'm as usual somewhat suspended between American
and British language and grammar conventions anyway, so I could fall
either way. However, being a thoroughgoing and convinced
traditionalist, with time-honored conventions falling like dominos
these days, I have to favor holding the line on any time-honored and
proven conventions we can, and I also find the aesthetics of quotation
marks inside more agreeable than more raggedy and ad hoc
renditions of "logical punctuation" in this context.

Publisher's note: As someone educated in both the States and Canada,
I try to find a sensible mean between strict adherence to either
American or British usage. We follow American conventions when using
single- and double-quotation marks, but we tend to follow "logical
punctuation" when it comes to actually using quotation marks. I edit
every article posted according to these conventions.

Also, we retain British spellings for our writers in Canada, the UK,
and other English-speaking nations outside the US. The rest of us use
American spellings. I do this as a reminder that we de serve an
international audience and several of our writers don't live in the US.
dk